Blond Or Blonde? Frank Ocean and Identity Construction
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Blond or Blonde? Frank Ocean and Identity Construction Kerri Lynn Rafferty Temple University Livingstone Undergraduate Research Award April 17, 2018 Rafferty 2 After winning two Grammys for his previous album, Channel Orange, and producing the third-highest selling album of the year, Frank Ocean declined to participate in the 2017 awards ceremony: “That institution certainly has nostalgic importance. It just doesn’t seem to be representing very well for people who come from where I come from, and hold down what I hold down."1 Throughout his career, Ocean has had a fraught relationship with the music industry, most notably in his confrontation with identity and genre categories. Scholarship has widely acknowledged (false) assumptions that the musical practices of an individual reflect their social identity. Identity politics, as music scholar Shana Goldin-Perschbacher argues, “inherently reinvests in intertwining heteropatriarchal, racist, and classist formations,” and neglects to take into account “concepts of performative, contextual, and shifting articulations of self.”2 However, journalism surrounding Frank Ocean exhibits a continual investment in identity and genre categories, producing a limited interpretation of his work. Articles such as “A Closer Look at Frank Ocean’s Coming Out Letter,” and “How Ocean’s Blonde Redefines Pop Queerness,” demonstrate interpretations of Ocean’s music that rely on an investment in identity politics, while neglecting broader, more interesting themes present throughout his latest album, Blonde. In this paper, I will provide a brief overview of Ocean's previous albums, examining how identity and genre categories have elicited a limited interpretation of his music. Then I explore how Blonde produces a sense of detachment from identity and genre categories by extending and expanding upon previous musical and lyrical elements present on his previous albums in tracks 1 Colin Stutz, “Frank Ocean Explains His Decision to Sit Out 2017 Grammys,” Billboard, November 15, 2016, http://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/hip-hop/7580396/frank-ocean-explains-sitting-out- 2017-grammys. 2 Shana Goldin-Perschbacher, “The World Has Made Me the Man of My Dreams: Meshell Ndegeocello and the ‘problem’ of Black female masculinity,” Popular Music 32, no. 3 (2013): 471-496. doi: 10.1017/S0261143013000329 Rafferty 3 “Nikes,” “Nights,” “Solo,” and “Solo Reprise.” Through means of developing a diverse range of characters and collaborating with other artists, Ocean is able to construct varying performances of self in his album Blonde to subvert identity and genre categories that had previously restricted interpretation of his music. Frank Ocean’s first album, Nostalgia, Ultra (2011), released independently and without promotion, was met with overwhelming critical acclaim. The album anticipates the musical and lyrical material featured on his subsequent albums, Channel Orange (Def Jam Recordings, 2012) and Blonde (Boys Don’t Cry, 2016), although Ocean’s debut expresses his political opinions more explicitly than his other works. In a rebellious move, Ocean chose to categorize the album as bluegrass and death metal, stating in interviews that genre labels were arbitrary, outdated, and prompted inaccurate interpretation of his music. Further, he commented that, if sung by a white artist, Nostalgia, Ultra might have been received in a less limited fashion by journalists: If I was of your complexion, singing “Novacane,” we'd be having a different conversation right now. Especially if that song was embodied in an album like Nostalgia, Ultra and I was your complexion, and I sang that whole collection, people would listen to it and be like “Yeah, he borrowed from R&B but it's not just R&B - it's a lot of things, and you can't just call it R&B.”3 Press surrounding Nostalgia, Ultra acknowledges the album's multi-genre references, which features covers and reinterpretations of songs by white rock bands including The Eagles, Coldplay, and MGMT. Yet, the same journalism neatly categorizes the album as “alternative R&B.” So, why does journalism maintain such neat genre categorization, despite recognizing Ocean’s use of a multitude of genres? Sociologist Beverly Skeggs explains that identity is “a metaphoric space in which to store and display resources,” where “some…use the classifications 3 Melissa Bradshaw, “‘Imagery, And A Little Bit Of Satire’: An Interview With Frank Ocean,” The Quietus, November 22, 2011, http://thequietus.com/articles/07450-frank-ocean-interview/. Rafferty 4 and characteristics of race, sexuality, class, and gender as resources even as others are denied their use because they are positioned as those classifications and are fixed by them.”4Ocean implies in his statement that white artists resource racialized musical genres to create a distinct post-genre sound, whereas he is fixed by identity and genre classifications. Further, music philosopher Robin James argues, “Claims to genre transcendence are credible when they are made by artists who…appear free of any particular social identity. In order to sound post-genre, one has to seem post-identity.”5 Ocean often refers to himself as a singer/songwriter as opposed to an R&B artist (the label given to him by journalists), stating that an R&B label limits interpretations of his music to a reading based in identity politics, while ignoring his use of hip- hop, rock, and pop influences or the narrative that he creates lyrically. His second album, Channel Orange, prompted Ocean to publicly discuss his love life after journalism speculative of his use of male-gendered pronouns was to be published. In response to questions regarding his sexuality, Ocean further refused categorization and expressed: I had Skyped into a listening session that Def Jam was hosting for Channel Orange, and one of the journalists, very harmlessly—quotation gestures in the air, "very harmlessly"—wrote a piece and mentioned [the use of male-gendered pronouns]. I'll respectfully say that life is dynamic and comes along with dynamic experiences, and the same sentiment that I have towards genres of music, I have towards a lot of labels and bos and shit. I'm in this business to be creative—I'll even diminish it and say to be a content provider...People should pay attention to that in the letter: I didn't need to label it for it to have impact. Because people realize everything that I say is so relatable, because when you're talking about romantic love, both sides in all scenarios feel the same shit. As a writer, as a creator, I'm giving you my experiences.6 4 Beverley Skeggs. "Uneasy Alignments, Resourcing Respectable Subjectivity." GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 10, no. 2 (2004): 291-298. https://muse.jhu.edu/. 5 Robin James, “Is the post- in post-identity the post- in post-genre?,” Popular Music 36, no. 1 (2017): doi: 10.1017/S0261143016000647 6 Amy Wallace, “Frank Ocean: On Channel Orange, Meeting Odd Future, and His Tumblr Letter,” GQ Magazine, 2012, http://www.gq.com/story/frank-ocean-interview-gq-december-2012. Rafferty 5 Ocean had originally intended to include the letter he makes reference to in the liner notes for the album, but felt compelled by what he (legitimately) perceived as intrusion by the journalist to create a sense of self-representation (presumably before the journalist did it for him). His strategy for creating this self-representation takes a critical approach to both identity and genre categories in favor of dynamism and autobiographical experience. Echoing his previous stance, he notes the relation of identity and genre categories and how these categories invite musical and personal misinterpretation. As Goldin-Perschbacher notes in a study of a similarly misinterpreted black queer musician, “curiosity about queer and/or Black people’s individual sexual ‘deviance’ masks the deep structural roots of White supremacy and heteropatriarchy, the systems responsible for pathologising [queer and Black individuals] and representing them as violent, promiscuous, and unhealthy.”7 Ocean has been subject to this pathologizing by journalists questioning the use of male-gendered pronouns in his songs, in an attempt to read his music solely in terms of identity politics. However, his ambiguous responses of self-representation serve to undermine this pathologizing, and further, readings of his music based only in identity politics. In February 2013, Ocean appeared in an interview with BBC Radio after Channel Orange had won a Grammy Award for Best Urban Contemporary album. Ocean revealed that he was “ten, eleven songs into this new thing,” and that the record would be cohesive and conceptual, extending musical and lyrical themes present throughout his last release.8 An image 7 Shana Goldin-Perschbacher, 2013, 479. 8 The category of “Best Urban Contemporary Album” was created for “albums containing at least 51 percent playing time of newly recorded contemporary vocal tracks derivative of R&B. [It] is intended for artists whose music includes the more contemporary elements of R&B and may incorporate production elements found in urban pop, urban Euro-pop, urban rock, and urban alternative.” Ocean was the first recipient of this award at the 55th Grammy Awards Ceremony. Rafferty 6 posted on Ocean’s personal blog two years after the interview hinted at, for the first time, what this concept might be: sitting pensively, Ocean is pictured holding copies of a magazine that reads “Boys Don’t Cry.” The image is posted above an exact copy of itself, and the caption declares, “I got two versions. I got twooo versions…”9 The blog post immediately sparked speculation among fans about the album’s concept: it would almost definitely confront issues surrounding masculinity and perhaps duality, but otherwise the picture was rather ambiguous in a manner that is characteristic of Ocean. These concepts of duality and ambiguity materialize through much of Blonde and allude to the complex manner in which Ocean constructs identity.